Visit my new "shop"

My good friend, Rhonda, told me about her "Etsy shop" she set up to sell her handmade signs. She thought I should set one up to sell my baby leggings so I checked it out and set one up! I don't have a lot up there right now, but as I get more made I will list them. Check it out and let me know what you think! Also I recommend it to anyone who is crafty and wants to sell their stuff, too (Lauren...)

www.LainasLaundry.etsy.com
www.Etsy.com

Visitors from SLO, coppers, and Laina

Last weekend we had our old college friends from San Luis Obispo, John and Amber, visit! They wanted to check out the area and also of course meet Laina. They toured from Boulder to Parker. We had a wonderful visit with them but unfortunately did not get any pics! How downright unthoughtful of us. Amber may have snapped a few shots, if so, send 'em on over, girl! I'm really hoping they enjoyed their time here and want to come back soon for another visit.

In other news, when does a crying baby come in handy? When you get pulled over by the cops! I was driving home the other day on a brand new road with absolutely nothing around at all. This is just a straight, flat, practically vacant road. The speed limit is only 45 on this street. I was going, oh, a wee bit faster than that, Laina was crying, it was past time for her nap. And then yes, I got pulled over. Let me tell you, I had never in the past gotten pulled over and not gotten a ticket. I was pretty bummed this was happening. Well that day was my lucky day. The officer was totally sympathetic to me and my crying baby. He said he had a little one, too. So he let me off with a warning. Since he was so nice I decided to ask him why the speed limit is only 45 on that road. He straight up told me it was so they could write tickets! Lame!

Now for the Laina section of this post - because you know I don't have pics of the other stuff and I can't let a post be published without both pics AND Laina cuteness. Plus she is getting so big it's amazing. I have been doing a pretty poor job of keeping records of her growth and achievements, either on paper or here on the blog or wherever. I just don't seem to remember to write anything down. She is growing cuter and getting more personality every day. Her little personality cracks me up, yet also sometimes frustrates me. She is getting to the point where she knows she can manipulate things around her, like toys, and me! She is also getting pretty good at crawling backwards. And she does the splits both ways amazingly well. She eats just about anything and everything, and also enjoys dropping bits of food on the floor for the dog to eat. That game was quickly stopped by putting Ella in the laundry room or outside when Laina eats. However, she still drops food on the floor, but at least isn't giggling at the dog licking it all up! I can't believe her birthday is less than 2 months away! I feel like I have been thinking about her birthday for months and months now, but now that it is so close, I am really starting to obsess over it. Not that we're doing anything huge. Just a little party. But she will be ONE YEAR old! It's crazy. I took her to get some portraits done on Valentines Day. They came out pretty darn cute. Sorry they're so small, these are just the thumbnails they emailed to me.

An Architectural Travesty (nearly) Averted

As someone who is pretty modern in my taste, I don't tend to get all that hung up on "rules" in architecture. Basically, if you have a good reason for something, it works well functionally and aesthetically, and the client is willing to pay for it, go for it.

I happen to be working on a project that is way outside my comfort zone, in that its by far the most rigidly symmetrical and ornate neoclassical building I've ever had to deal with. It could turn out fairly nice, but its just not normally my style. I've already ranted about the big name designer from new york that defined the "look" of the building (but has been relieved of duty so we can finally finish the thing while shaving $10 million off of the cost to meet the budget) but this time the culprit was a frightening request by the owners.

There is a bridge over a private street that cuts through the site to connect two wings of the building at the upper floors. It used to be a single shallow arch that spanned the street. The arch is non-structural, there are reinforced concrete beams inside of it that do the heavy lifting, so its just decorative.

The Original Bridge

During value engineering, the contractor and owner decided to drop a column in the center to save hundreds of thousands of dollars in structure (along with deleting the trellis on the 5th floor and some other reductions in detail). When redrawing the elevation, I made the fairly obvious decision to split it into two arches, since there is now a row of columns down the center median.

After Value Engineering

Personally, I thought it was an improvement (as did the owner of our firm), because it reduces the scale to be more pedestrian-friendly. Apparently the client decided they wanted to keep the single arch, leaving the column line in the center. Horrible idea, I thought, but they'll figure it out if I draw it up for them. So I drew it up as an "option" and sent it off for them to reject and feel like they made the decision themselves...

The Client's Requested Abomination

They liked it!

Normally I don't get all that hung up on bad ideas that come from clients... after all, its their money, their building, let them have what they want. But this one was just too much. I found my limit. I started thinking about the thousands and thousands of years of human history in which the arch has been a staple of monumental, civic, even primitive architecture... the roman aqueducts, the arc de triumph, ancient huts, modern bridges, even the St. Louis Arch. The invention of the arch as a structural system was a world-changing feat of engineering, almost as important as the wheel! I started to imagine some bonehead sticking a column in the middle of these various monuments to human ingenuity... then decided to work some quick photoshop magic just to prove my point. These three images are now hanging on the wall at my workstation:

The Project Architect at our firm showed these to the contractor and the owner's representative at a small meeting the other day and they all bursted out laughing... the message was received, but there was still no directive to ignore the clients opinion. I was starting to get worried I was going to have to make some kind of stand on the issue and refuse to put it on the construction documents. I considered sending an incognito email to the new york designer's office so they could call up the client in a rage and set them straight on what a horrible move it would be. I imagined offering the client a sizable sum of cash if they could find a single example in the last 10,000 years of architecture of such a thing. Luckily it didn't come to that.

I'm happy to report that, while the client may still be pondering a gorgeous column in the center of their arch... the owner's representative managed to get approval for the double arch scenario by going sort of over (or around) their heads to another financially interested party... so lucky for everyone, the integrity of the arch will be maintained for the indefinite future...

I really hope my next project is more up my design alley. This neoclassical stuff is driving me nuts... especially when I have to defend something as basic as the arch to people who actually want a neoclassical building...

*UPDATE - Spoke too soon... added "(nearly)" to the title... the emasculated arch is still a possibility...

**UPDATE #2: Now the project is on hold due to financing problems... Second potential prolonged hold since I started working on this project a week after moving to Denver... in July 2006!!!

Weekend Getaway

Jay's relatives were skiing in the mountains last week and we decided to go visit them so they could meet Laina. It was a short trip, we drove up Sat morning and drove back Sunday morning (we heard there was a storm coming in on Sun and didn't want to get stuck). It was great to see Jay's family, even though we didn't get to go snowboarding. We were in Beaver Creek and while it was certainly beautiful, the stupid "roundies" as we call them (traffic circles) were driving us insane as we tried to find parking! Roundies are bad enough, but then add snow and crazy drivers!

It was a nice getaway, and here are some pics from the trip. (We don't have any of all of the relatives together because those pictures were taken with Jay's Aunt's camera, though she is supposed to email them to us).

Here is a lovely picture of the traffic sign! Nice shot, Jenna!

The beautiful mountains, with some cute gingerbready houses in the lower right

Bundled to the hilt!

Laina in her new sled, getting ready for a ride

Our little arctic explorer

Laina and Daddy
(which she says, by the way, with meaning, her first real word!)

And below is a video of me pulling Laina around on her sled.
I think I was having WAY more fun than she was!